


bloom

by Amber



Series: Create Something Every Day! (October 2018) [9]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Choking, Coughing, Fade to Black, Language of Flowers, M/M, October Prompt Challenge, hanahaki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 16:01:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16267574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber/pseuds/Amber
Summary: Prompt 10: Hanahaki.





	bloom

Peony petals taste sour, crushed between his back molars, ground into a determined paste, and swallowed. They'll stain his tongue red. There's an astringency that burns his throat, turns his stomach, but he's so used to swallowing flowers now that his expression doesn't even shift, as Jon explains the plan for the Unknowing.

Martin has been having flowers for Jon for three years now, since he was twenty-six and neither of them worked for the Archives. Nothing serious at first, white clover winding up his throat, daffodils stuck between his teeth. The night-blooming jasmine when Jon smiled at him lingered for a week, sweet and bitter, his breath perfumed with it. But now they're always red, coughing up carnations and roses like blood into the bathroom sink.

Probably he should have said something, when they all started to understand that the supernatural was real, the predicament they were in at the Institute. Definitely he should have said something when Tim fessed up about his brother — they all have something weird in their past. 

See, the reason Martin works at the Institute isn't just because his mother's medical bills were more than flipping burgers and filing work could pay, wasn't just because he needed to get out of suburban Manchester before his soul withered into nothing. He'd come the first time because a baffled doctor had slipped him their card, and while he'd never actually brought himself to make a statement to Ms Robinson about the flowers, or even write it down (a fact he is now very bloody grateful for, years later) he did get chatting with Rosie at the front desk about how her coworker who does the filing had just quit. A few hours beefing up his resume with bullshit and he was a shoe-in, applying before they'd even advertised the position and overqualified besides. (This part he is, perhaps, slightly less grateful for these days.)

Joining the Institute did let him do a little research. As it turns out, Hanahaki (花吐き, literally "blossom vomit") is the subject of more than one case in the Archives, has at least one book in the library. It seems clustered outbreaks mostly happen in Japan and China, and Martin doesn't really have an excuse to request their research. Occasionally people make a film about it or something — usually a love story, which is sort of sweet unless you've read the case files of people wasting away from it.

None of the information explains how to cure it. Which at first, that's fine — he hasn't had a problem with the flowers since he moved to London. And then he meets Jon while he's doing some research, and suddenly it's not fine at all. It's late nights over the toilet bowl, spitting out wads of masticated petals. It's having to carry a handkerchief around to spit into. It's sneezing colorful flecks into the palm of his hand. It's smelling like a garden, enough so that people compliment him on his soap or shampoo. "Floral," says Sasha. "You'll have to tell me where you got it."

It's not really a sickness, he tells himself. His mum had been proper sick, wasting away and cruel with the pain of it. This is just a mild inconvenience, really. And all right, sometimes the flowers tickle his throat in a way that has him coughing until his chest is sore, but it's not all the time. And yes, sometimes he lies in his bed and the pressure of the love blooming in his chest keeps him awake with its aching, but other people have it worse. It's nothing more serious than a common cold, or a spot of anxiety, or a mild allergy. 

Martin won't let it affect his work. Especially not once Elias chooses him to be promoted to Archival Assistant. He badly wants to impress Jon, even if he doesn't know why— 

( sickly sweet blossom flavor spreading out from his soft palate — he knows why. )

"Martin," Jon says, and his tone is that of a man ready to be disappointed. The new Head Archivist is not well pleased with his assistants, particularly not Martin. "Help me look over these records. I suspect we may be able to trace the von Klosen family through to Britain, but I can't find that name on the manifests specifically, so we'll need to look for variations."

"Of course," says Martin. "Just let me get us a cup of tea and we'll get down to it."

He ducks out into the staff bathroom and coughs, and coughs, expurgating the tickle that's been tormenting him for the last five minutes, until finally there's a burst of petals all over the bathroom. He sweeps them up with his hands, hocks the last soggy few out of the back of his throat, flushes them all down the toilet. 

There. Sorted.

He's fine.

Except it only grew worse from there, didn't it? And it was always proximal to Jon. Martin was almost grateful when he started vanishing for months at a time — worried, yes, god, of course, but grateful. He would have whole weeks flower free. Of course, then finding out Jon had been _kidnapped_ made Martin feel awful about how much pleasure he'd taken in his boss's absence. And he's sick with secrets, especially as everyone else's start to come out.

It's the eleventh hour, and he's been chewing back petals all day making plans with Jon.

"Can we, talk?" he asks Jon.

"We're talking."

"Somewhere more, um, private, maybe?"

Jon sighs, like he knows where this is going. Maybe he isn't actually completely oblivious to Martin's terminal crush. But Martin overcomes his embarrassment and says, "Yeah, just, downstairs maybe. Archival Storage."

The bed's still down there — actually, it hasn't much changed from when Martin used to sleep down here. He can't imagine doing so now, the Institute just as spooky as the worms, but maybe Tim used it for depression naps or Jon was working more overtime than he should again.

"Right," says Martin, pacing. "Right."

"Martin," says Jon. "If you're about to tell me that you have feelings for me—"

"Yes," says Martin, turning towards him even though he'd rather that hole with teeth in America came and swallowed him into the Earth. "I mean, sort of. It's not about feelings, it's about flowers."

"What?"

"Flowers." It doesn't exactly take much for Martin to demonstrate given the circumstances. He reaches into his mouth, coughing up a half-chewed carnation. It looks like a sad dead thing in his palm as he holds it out. A petal flutters to the floor, and Jon stares.

" _What_ ," he says again.

"It's called, um, hanahaki. I don't ... really want to make a statement about it?" Martin winces. "Flowers grow in me. Mostly — mostly around you."

Jon blinks, nods. "I think... I think I have heard of it, actually, yes. Christ, Martin, how long has this been going on."

"Oh, years," says Martin airily. "It's fine." Jon's expression says it's not fine. "I - I need your help with them, actually," Martin admits. "I know you're only supposed to — watch, but I need to know what they are. Where they're coming from."

"I'm not a surgeon, Martin," Jon says, but despite the flat tone Martin can see he's interested.

"Not surgery," says Martin. "Just... I bought this long pair of tweezers, see?" He produces them from his pocket. "But whenever I try and pull them out myself, I get too dizzy. So I wanted to tell you because, I felt I should tell you, before we... before you go. But I also want you to help."

Jon stares at him. Then: "All right," he says. "But let me get some water and the first aid kit, just in case."

Martin lies back on the camp bed, and Jon brings down a desk light, plugs it in and sits it on a chair to shine down on Martin's face, making him feel like he's at the dentist. He squints up into the bright, wrinkling his nose.

"Open up," Jon says gently, and then there are fingers, Jon's fingers, at his jaw, his lips, and oh, his heart is so full, and oh, his lungs are so full.

Martin opens his mouth and closes his eyes, and concentrated on not gagging as Jon slips his fingers in. Martin can feel himself getting hard, prays Jon won't notice — but of course he's aroused, with Jon just pressing his mouth open with his hand, making him drool and take it. He hasn't thought to put on gloves. His fingers taste like ink, a noxious floral flavor not that far from chewing back flowers. When Martin licks his finger he can feel the whorls of his fingerprint beneath his tongue.

Jon must think he's playing around. "Martin," he says sharply. Martin makes the two-tone noise that makes up the word sorry when someone else's hand is in your mouth.

At first Jon just gets petals. "I still cannot believe," he says, drawing them out and examining them, waxy and fresh. He doesn't have to elaborate; Martin knows. It's ridiculous, isn't it, to grow plants inside yourself.

But grow they must. It feels as though they're blossoming even now, more and more forcing their way up his throat. Jon's tweezers finally catch something that isn't skin, and Martin spasms in an attempt not to cough or choke, his eyes watering.

Jon pulls. Martin feels it in his _whole chest_ , like an ingrown hair but all the way through him, and is this what the worms were like when he pulled them out of Jon's skin? A root system shifting, not quite dislodging anything else but not going easy, either.

Martin screams.

Jon doesn't stop. 

He draws it out and out and when he's done it emerges, wet with spit and blood and bile, a long-stemmed red rose that ends in a tangle of tiny white roots, soft as skin.

Martin is coughing, now, coughing and crying, curling over the side of the camp bed and hacking up blood and petals into his cupped hands. The taste is noxious and sweet, copper and flowers. "Jon," he gets out hoarsely, and he's sure Jon didn't mean to hurt him, just got curious, but he's so scared now, so scared that Jon will walk away just to see what happens. He forces himself to push up, grip at Jon's shirt, look him in the eye. "You have to help me."

Jon looks taken aback, horrified — at Martin's desperation, maybe, or simply the flower still clutched in his hand (or maybe he is just now realizing the inhumanity Martin could see in his eyes as it drove him to see his curiosity through, to keep pulling until the roots were plucked.) "I don't," he says, "I don't know — I could call an ambulance, if that—"

Martin kisses him.

It's all blood between them, but maybe it's always been. Even if he wanted softness, tea and comfort, that's an unlikely optimism in the face of their gruesome lives. No — it's blood and flowers, the living, human parts of Martin that he has grown for Jon, as if to fill all the man's empty spaces.

"Please," he begs when the kiss breaks. Jon lifts a hand to his face, thumbing over Martin's cheekbones, peering unerringly into him with his dark eyes.

"This is how it's cured, isn't it," he murmurs. "Required love. But Martin, I'm not sure I can —"

Martin kisses him again, pressing flowers into his mouth with his tongue, forcing Jon to be the one who chokes on them. He doesn't want it anymore, doesn't want to be in love with this stupid, handsome nightmare of a man.

When the kiss breaks, his eyes are clouded with tears again, not autonomic choke-wet but genuine upset. "Please," he whispers again, and it's unfair to ask this of anyone, he knows, duplicitous, manipulative, yes, yes, he _knows_ , but he can't go on like this anymore.

Jon spits hyssop into his palm. "I could die tomorrow. I'd like to do so knowing you will live. But I don't know if I'm enough."

"You've always been enough for me," Martin tells him, and Jon gathers his shaking form close, awkward with the unfamiliarity of another person in his arms.

"Then I'm yours," he promises, thumbing blood from the corner of Martin's mouth. "Tonight and — well, for however long we have."

"However long we have," agrees Martin, pulling him down into the camp bed.


End file.
